Apple working to make your iPhone a personal health hub

According to a report by CNBC, Apple has a top secret team that has been reaching out to developers, hospitals, and other industry groups about bringing clinical data like detailed lab results to the iPhone. Apparently, Apple is also looking at storing these results in the Cloud, so all you have to do the next time you need any sort of health information is to turn to an app on your iPhone.

No more having to remember drug allergies or the dates of your previous medical treatments. And if you have to go to a new doctor, all the information you need to update him on your medical history is in your iPhone.

It’s easy to see the benefits of such a system, and would be solving a problem the health industry has been struggling with for years. As CNBC reports, the lack of data-sharing between health providers lends to unnecessary mistakes and missed diagnoses as there is only so much medical history a patient can provide accurately.

It seems Apple has been in discussions with various health IT industry groups to make this goal a reality, with CNBC’s sources listing “The Argonaut Project” (a private sector initiative that is promoting the adoption of open standards for health information) and "The Carin Alliance," (an organization that is looking to give patients more control over own medical data) as just two of the groups Apple has engaged in discussion with.

If Apple manages to do to health what it did with portable media devices, it certainly would revolutionize health care. According to CNBC, the majority of doctors use iOS, and Apple has more than a billion devices around the globe which can extend the reach of hospitals and doctors. Patients would definitely benefit from not having to store or remember all of their medical history for every benefit, so let’s see if Apple can succeed where Google and Microsoft didn’t.